YMMV / Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final mission of the Imperial campaign. True, you face wave after wave of Traitor Marines (World Eaters, Thousand Sons and Emperor's Children, and then finally Death Guard), and yes there are tons of those obnoxious Chaos totems from the below-mentioned boss rush. The issue arises from two factors: one, there's nothing particularly spectacular about Abaddon's mooks: they're all the ships you've been fighting throughout the campaign without any additional bells and whistles. Two, unlike the boss rush they will come rushing headlong toward your fleet, effectively negating the nastiest part of the totems: that is, having to maneuver through them dodging ships trying to get in striking distance of the enemy flagship. It is perfectly feasible, and in fact your best move to simply burn retros and park your fleet right in your starting zone out of the totems' reach, barrage the incoming ships with Nova Cannons and finish off anything that manages to survive. Then the Vengeful Spirit engages, and to be fair it's a heavy hitter, but it's got a single Cruiser for backup and if you've done the proper sidequests Yvrainne and the Dark Angels will appear to back you up. Your combined firepower will shred the Vengeful Spirit to pieces in about thirty seconds. Cutscene, roll credits. All in all, the final mission is a shocking anticlimax...until you remember you're up against Failbaddon the Harmless.
• Heartwarming Moments: The rechristening of the corrupted Macragge's Honor is one, twisted as only the forces of Chaos can be: Monarchia was the triumph of Lorgar's labors, the perfect Shining City dedicated to the Emperor down to the bedrock. Despite turning their backs on the Emperor and joining His sworn enemies, and thus having no real reason to maintain connection to a city dedicated to a 'false god', the Word Bearers still memorialize that defining part of their history as the Monarchia Redeemed, a giant "FUCK YOU!" to the Ultramarines that destroyed it.
• Demonic Spiders: Tyranid bio-vessels aren't particularly strong, have rather short effective ranges, lack maneuverability, and are vulnerable to morale damage after losing their admiral vessel. However, God-Emperor help you if they get close enough to start boarding your ships. A tyranid cruiser or even light cruiser has a boarding action capable of rapidly depopulating lesser crews, and many bio-vessels possess "feeder tendrils" that latch onto ships and simply drain away the crew point-by-point. Furthermore, all tyranid vessels are naturally stealthed, so unless you bring along escorts and probes, you likely won't see them until they're already close enough to close the gap with a Deadly Lunge.
• Game-Breaker: Carrier fleets in the campaigns except the Necrons', and that's only because they don't have bombers. Campaign missions seem balanced on the assumption that the player's fleet either meets the enemy's in a massive furball somewhere in the center of the map, or is forced to cross the map to destroy something immobile on the far side (like Abaddon's Chosen). Barring a handful of missions that force you to move for one reason or another, simply parking a carrier fleet in your deployment zone, going into Reload stance and then bombing the living daylights out of everything hostile is a ludicrously effective strategy against any faction that isn't Aeldari^note their highly agile ships tend to outrun bomber squadrons or Necrons^note because of their Starpulse Wave ability that instantly destroys any squadron in its range. Tyranids also don't have bombers, but their hideously strong hangar-launched boarding squadrons work even better at killing ships dead across the map. The kicker? On the off-chance that the enemy actually makes it far enough to inflict casualties on your fleet, your reinforcements are right behind you while theirs have to cross the whole map before they can contribute to the battle.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Invasions. Any faction in the campaign that has enough Threat and isn't already present in a sector can launch an attack on a random star system to gain a foothold. Unlike normal attacks, invasions aren't bound by map geography, and every so often you'll be scrambling to recall fleets to protect systems deep within friendly territory you might've otherwise believed safe.
  • Defense platforms. Not particularly damaging, not particularly resilient, just plain annoying speed bumps wherever they appear.
    • Particularly frustrating during Domination battles, where the defense platforms will split up into pairs that automatically capture two control zones (if a space station is present, it will cap a third point the same way), giving the defender an unfair headstart. Its not uncommon to completely slaughter the enemy fleet, only to lose the battle anyway because the local defenses were racking up victory points in the background.
  • As usual, enemy escorts for mostly the same reasons as defense platforms, with the added annoyance of being highly mobile.
• Memetic Mutation: Ever since the first trailer for the Chaos expansion pack revealed the face of the Chaos fleets' commander, Malos Vrykan, jokes about Thanos now working for the Ruinous Powers have been making the rounds.
• Nightmare Fuel: The launch trailer's prologue has a good one. A group of surviving Imperial ships from the Fall of Cadia are traversing a dark and stormy stretch of space, when an officer suddenly registers Xenos contacts. Cue a flash of space lightning...to reveal a Tyranid Hive Fleet. The flotilla's commander wisely orders every ship to run like hell.
  • The intro to the Chaos campaign is horrific, with a group of Word Bearers performing a divining ritual to learn who the Ruinous Powers want as their Admiral. Said ritual involves a poor sod having (huge, serrated) hooks on chains punched through his skin a la Hellraiser: he's quite understandably screaming bloody murder up to the point a Daemon takes his body. His eyes start glowing and his agonized expression turns into a Psychotic Smirk, and he calmly tears free of the hooks with a series of disgusting squelching noises as he declares his choice. Cue the screen blacking out and a horrific, unearthly scream before cutting to the image of assorted Daemons slaughtering the other candidates, Malos standing calmly in the midst of the carnage.
• That One Achievement: One achievement requires you to promote a Titan-class ship to maximum veterancy in any campaign. The problem is that you don't get these ships until the campaign is pretty much over, and it takes a lot of battles to grind enough XP to reach level 4. Chances are there'll hardly be any hostile forces left on the map, if any at all, so good luck finding enough cannon fodder for your Titan to kill for this achievement. Necrons have the added disadvantage of not even having a Titan in the first place. It's mitigated somewhat in the Chaos campaign, with a Blackstone Fortress recruited very early in the story.
• That One Boss: The Ancient One, the Tyranid boss. While victory is achieved by destroying it no matter how many other ships are on the field...that's just it. You must destroy it, and since it has such an ungodly amount of crew that it can refill AT WILL being a Tyranid, you've gotta kill it via health damage. All 8000 of its hitpoints. On top of this staggering durability, the Ancient One has a bulky shield that all but necessitates the likes of disruption bombs to get rid of it quickly, a psychic scream that ravages morale in a huge radius and endless ranks of Tyranid ships of all shapes and sizes backing it up. The boss battle becomes a sheer grind, and on principle you do not want a protracted battle against the Tyranids. Even the White Scars that show up after you get rid of about half the Ancient One's health serve as little more than a distraction for a few of the Ancient One's minions, who will rip the Space Marines to shreds in just a few minutes. Highly recommended to make heavy use of Space Marine fleets for this one, as they're at least immune to the psychic scream attack.
• That One Level: All campaigns have at least one mission that may cost you a new keyboard or two, but what takes the cake is "Legend of the Past" in the Chaos campaign. First you fight a bunch of powerful Ultramarine ships, but that's okay, you have the Vengeful Spirit backing you up. Then another, bigger wave appears, forcing Abaddon to retreat, but he'll still take out a few Smurf ships on his way out. Then... the flippin' Macragge's Honour shows up with an even bigger fleet in tow, and this time the Vengeful Spirit is gone for good. This would be bad enough already, but it's made a thousand times worse by your new objective: turn Papa Smurf's ship into a drifting hulk. Titan-class vessels have ~150 troops aboard, which a) requires a metric ton of boarding actions to wear down^note even more if the Honour goes into Call To Arms mode; it's entirely possible you don't even have enough boarding actions to accomplish this, b) takes a long time during which the giant ship continuously rains hell on your fleets, c) you can't shoot the thing because you mustn't destroy it before it's depopulated, and if you don't disable your ships' weapons, chances are this'll happen. So, to summarize: after two gruelling battles, your damaged and depleted ships are supposed to neutralize an entire Ultramarine fleet including their primarch's legendary flagship, without shooting back most of the time. The mission becomes a lot easier if you bring Khornate vessels (effectively infinite boarding actions) or at least dedicated carrier fleet, but that requires previous knowledge of what's about to happen.
  • The Chalice of Entropy is widely regarded as one of the worst missions in the entire game due to both a sudden and unexplained gameplay change and its poor execution. As your first Chaos mission against the Necrons, forced to stealthily move through gas clouds to ambush Trazyn the Infinite. Keep in mind that you must do this with a Nurglite Grand Cruiser and you are constantly followed by probes.
  • The Imperial campagin's Boss Rush against Abaddon's four top lieutenants. Let's ignore the fact that the mission isn't cleared (ie. the crisis meter won't reset) until all four are killed, and they're separate systems each meaning you have to zoom Spire all over the map as fast as you can. The worst part of them isn't the various totems scattered across the map that do various nasty things to your ships (Nurgle's totems create lines of locusts between them that chew your ships up should you enter the clouds, Slaanesh's paralyze ships and strip their shields should you meet their gaze, Khorne's launch powerful boarding actions against you and Tzeentch's teleport you randomly all over the map), it's the fact that until you down the enemy flagship, any other ships you destroy will simply be replaced by another of the same tonnage...and they respawn right near the flagship, making destroying them an utter waste of time until the lieutenant is dealt with. This means you have to soak up damage from four or five other ships on top of the flagship and hope and pray to the Emperor that you can kill it before taking too much punishment, and then deal with aforementioned four or five other ships. And then you do it three more times.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Chaos campaign gives you command of a Blackstone Fortress fairly quickly, and most definitely before you start to engage the Necrons in earnest. Blackstones were built for the express purpose of killing Necrons (specifically, their C'tan star gods), so it would only be natural to give this one a central role in the campaign's Necron annihilation arc. Sadly, this opportunity remains unexplored and the Blackstone Fortress "merely" a very powerful addition to your fleets. This can feel particularly aggravating to anyone who's played the Necron campaign because there a Blackstone Fortress does play a crucial role in the plot.